7 January

Having a map of how the service currently works, helps to inform how that service should be designed. It can tell us which services we should work on, how to work on those services and who with. The map also identifies where patterns and standards can be used in driving services.

11 February

The changes I’m asking us all to make are big, exciting, and challenging; we all need to be bold to make it happen. To do that, people on the frontline need to know the centre will back them up, and will give them the tools they need to do the right thing for their users. We will.

29 February

8 March

In future, no-one from GDS will take part in a panel discussion of two or more people unless there is at least one woman on the panel, not including the chair… In future, no one from GDS will speak at an event unless the event's organisers are clearly working hard to address gender diversity on stage.

9 March

11 March

To get a large and complex programme like GOV.UK Verify to work, I think the main task is to manage energy and attention and point them in the right direction and minimise wasted effort. To do that, there are 3 sets of things we need to understand and respond to: goals, people and cycles (inside and outside our team). All these things change over time and they each influence the other more or less at any given time.

This team has domain control for the register.gov.uk domain. It will work with the register custodians who are responsible for running registers and are the domain experts, to ensure that the data in their registers is modelled in ways that meet users’ needs, and work with other registers in the government data ecosystem.

21 March

Our main users are not the millions of people receiving the messages. GOV.UK Notify is invisible to these people. It’s just part of the service they are already using. Our main users are the people working on the service teams: technical architects, service managers, developers, designers, product managers, business analysts and user researchers.

4 April

We wanted something that gives us a bird's-eye view of our recruitment pipeline and there's nothing like a Spider chart to help do this. We’re able to see everything that’s going on in our pipeline and pick out what we want to talk about with our hiring communities. The board helps us plan and manage our day to day workload more effectively, and it also raises the visibility of our work. Making things open makes them better, and we’re happy that people can see what we’re working on and when we’re doing it.

8 April

…we learned that in order to make this big change – to transform the relationship between citizen and state - we need to collaborate. Everyone in government needs to work together. Government has been ruled by silos for too long. Not just organisational silos, not even just technical ones, but silos of knowledge and experience that make service delivery more difficult than it should be.

21 April

Users need to know if the information they've inserted is incorrect. We've included clearly worded descriptive error messages. This helps put the user at ease as they know what they need to fix to continue with their payment.

11 May

It doesn’t matter what government looks like in 2030; what matters is how dynamic and responsive it is. Not the what we do, but how we do it. So, the biggest problem we face is reshaping ourselves so that we’re better placed to change as rapidly as the world around us.

17 May

Our goal is to make our services as accessible as possible; to exclude no one. We do this by trying to make sure that there aren’t any barriers that make it impossible or difficult for anyone to use them. We want our services to be easy to use by everyone.

24 May

GOV.UK Verify live announcement

GOV.UK Verify went live.

Janet Hughes and the team celebrating as GOV.UK Verify moves from beta to live

It’s taken a huge amount of work from a lot of people to get here (thank you, everyone!), but live is really just the starting line. We’ve got a huge range of work on the go to iterate and improve the service, and we’ll carry on working as hard as ever once we’re live to make the service as simple and straightforward as possible for users. Watch this space - we’ll carry on updating you about our progress as we go along.

2 June

People who were naturally more confident and more assertive thrived, but people who prefer to take time and collaborate could be left out. The Women’s group was formed as a direct response to this, and its aim from the start was to make GDS a more inclusive place to work. We’ve been empowered by our senior team and by the whole organisation to make recommendations for change, and we’ve always been listened to and strongly supported.

22 June

23 June

Transformation means understanding what your people are capable of, the skills they have, and how to best put them to good use. It’s about trust, and giving your team a mandate to do what they think is right. If you foster the right environment of creativity, of trust, of empowerment, you get better results from your team. And the team, as we’ve been saying for years now, is the unit of delivery.

The United Kingdom’s engagement strategy has focused on maximizing openness and transparency in information provision in general, and especially in relation to policy formulation. Virtually all policy documents proposed by the government are published on GOV.UK.

26 July

Over 70 service teams across central government have already contacted us to say they’d like to use GOV.UK Notify to talk to their users. This is a testament to the value and viability of shared components both for the people who receive the messages, and the service teams that use Notify to send them.

2 August

Doing 100 rounds of usability testing means that we have a really detailed understanding of our user needs, and a lot of insight into what works and what doesn’t work in terms of designing the GOV.UK Verify journey.

23 August

International collaboration plays a large part in what GDS does, from influencing global standard-setting bodies to knowledge-sharing with other governments. Our team acts as a bridge between GDS projects and the teams that have the expertise. We’re here to co-ordinate international collaboration and set the international strategic direction.

24 August

Compressing your thoughts and ideas into 140 characters takes quite some consideration. What matters most to your readers? Brevity wins over excess; and hashtags and carefully chosen words can speak volumes in terms of tone and impact.

26 August

1 September

A digital career in government is one of the most exciting things you can do. We're no longer stuck in the past - we're able to build teams in a modern, flexible way. My team’s job is to make this the norm for all digital professionals across government. No matter which department they start their career, and no matter what moves they subsequently make from one department to another, and from one role to the next.

7 September

The Supplier Standard describes our expectations of, and commitments to, the technology companies we will need to work with us to make this a success. It introduces 6 shared principles, which support the best behaviours we have seen from suppliers and buyers.

21 October

26 October

GDS is here to help departments transform the relationship between the citizen and the state. And to do this, we will support, enable and assure departments as they deliver their digital transformations. We’re here to listen to them, to help them do the right work, and be confident that it’s being done in the most efficient and effective way.